


everything is blue

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2018 [13]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Anxiety, Drama, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-13 22:40:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15374961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Ralph lives his life in shades of yellow.Sequel to WR400: Annabelle and Routine Maintenance.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Me @ 1AM: "Golly, I have to be awake at 9AM for work, I should probably hold off on finishing this story and go to sleep."
> 
> Me @ 6AM: *SLAMS FIST ON DESK* "SLEEP" *SLAM* "IS" *SLAM* "FOR" *SLAM* "THE" *SLAM* "WEAK"

Since the basement, Ralph lived most of his days in yellow.  
  
He’d scratched scratched scratched at the door and finally managed to get the lock and the doorknob broken and he’d run far, far away into the night before the teenagers could comer back and cut him, spill his blue all over the floor and make him hurt again. He’d pulled the fabric out of the trash and thrown it over his head and _especially_ his face, because his face-  
  
-the teenagers ruined it.  
  
They had _ruined it_.  
  
Ralph had gone so red when he’d seen it for the first time in that broken mirror, had made strained whiny-static sounds and looked away and looked back and looked away and looked back because it was terrible terrible _so_ terrible, but he had to look! He had to see what the bad humans, the teenagers had done to him. They’d hit him so hard and scrambled his mind and burned and cut and it had hurt _so bad_ , but he hadn’t realized how bad it would _look._  
  
He could never go outside again.  
  
He could never garden again.  
  
He could never rake leaves or trim hedges.  
  
He couldn’t be out in the sun.  
  
The teenagers would find him.  
  
The humans would break him.  
  
Ralph had to hide forever.  
  
He hid in a lot of places at first. Nice, dark places with no humans in them. Ralph moved a lot, put the hood over his head and changed hiding spots at night so that the humans didn’t see him, so that the teenagers would be asleep and not see him and find him and bring him back to the basement. He went so long without being in the sun and he hate hate _hated_ it.  
  
He wanted the sun.  
  
He wanted the grass and dirt.  
  
He wanted flowers again.  
  
Ralph spent so much of his time yellow, like bad but not _bad_ , because he spent so much time thinking about the basement and the bad things that had happened there and all of the bad things that would happen if the humans ever caught him, if the teenagers ever found him again, it was all he thought about when he wasn’t missing the outside and wishing for flowers again.  
  
Eventually, Ralph found the house.  
  
It was boarded up, old and broken and abandoned. But it was behind a fence, which meant that humans wouldn’t come into it as easily as they could some other hiding spots, and so that made Ralph go blue for the first time in a while because _ohhh_ safety was something he hadn’t had for a while. There was also a scraggly little strip of grass and dirt along the edge of the house, and he was _very_ blue at the thought of being able to plant flowers there.  
  
He settled into the house, kept very quiet and invisible in the day and poked his head outside at night, sometimes even in the early morning so he could feel the sun. The sun made him much more blue than he’d been, being shielded from the outside world, from the humans made him blue too.  
  
One night, two humans came.  
  
Drunk. Mad. One had a gun.  
  
Guns made Ralph red red _scared_ red Make Mistakes red and that was what Ralph did, he Made a Mistake and went so badly red that when he’d gone yellow again he’d realized that he’d killed the two humans and left them bloody on the ground. He made the little whining sounds again, panicking, because bad, bad, killing humans was _bad_ , androids weren’t supposed to kill humans, androids died for killing humans.  
  
Didn’t matter if they were drunk.  
  
Didn’t matter if they had guns.  
  
So Ralph put them into the basement that he never went into and left them down there for good.  
  
Hours days weeks time passed and Ralph didn’t notice didn’t care because his internal clock was broken by the teenagers. No way to tell how long it had been since the teenagers had taken him from the park, to the house, to the basement. Ralph didn’t care, either: Time was only good for knowing when he needed to get blue blood, when he needed to go to the junkyard and siphon some from the dead androids. The junkyard was sad, so sad, dead and dying androids everywhere. Ralph had to stay away from humans or he might end up with them.  
  
One night he came back from the junkyard to find another human in his house.  
  
“Hey,” The man gurgled, red ( _red!_ ) residue all over his face and body, “What you doing here, pretty-boy?”  
  
Ralph had shuddered, had jerked horribly as he remembered, _aw, this one’s pretty, he’s so **cute**_ the girls had said when he was in the back seat of the car and they’d been taking him to the basement.  
  
“Go away,” Ralph whimpered, voice squeaking and frightened, shrinking away as he was going yellow yellow _red,_ “Go away. _Go away._ ”  
  
“Nah,” The man said, spat on the floorboards, “Come here, come here pretty-boy.”  
  
Ralph went red, and so did the man.  
  
Red light, red residue, red blood all over Ralph’s knife.  
  
He put the human in the bathtub and drew the curtain. There’d been so much more blood this time and Ralph had to go downstairs and clean up, had to wipe up the blood as best he could so he wouldn’t see the _red_ everywhere.  
  
Then he’d curled up on the mattress upstairs and whimpered some more.  
  
Ralph powered down for a little bit, slept like the humans did. He never managed to sleep for more than a little while now, because whenever he did he went back to the basement, went back to the cutting and the burning and the girls putting their hands in places they shouldn’t have. Those memories made him red and Ralph couldn’t stay powered-down when he was red.  
  
The afternoon brought rain.  
  
The night brought Kara and the little girl.  
  
Kara was small and pretty pretty and the little girl was tiny and pretty pretty and Kara tried to tell him that the little girl was a human, wasn’t that funny? The little girl was an android just like them, but okay- Ralph could play a game. Little girl was human, and that meant little girl needed food, and that meant that Ralph would need to hunt for some food.  
  
Ralph let them stay, let Kara and the little girl stay and sleep in the house, and he’d gone out and caught an animal, a furry thing that had squealed when he’d killed it, and he brought it back for them. “Succulent! Succulent!” He assured them as they looked in awe at what he’d caught. They sat at the table like the humans did, and the little girl didn’t eat and Ralph got a little _yellow_ at that, because it was rude, he’d caught that furry thing for her and she wouldn’t-  
  
But Kara reminded him of his manners.  
  
Ralph felt bad, so bad, because Kara and the little girl had been nice and he could hardly blame the little girl for being rude, because he wasn’t always so nice when he was yellow or _red_ , and Kara reminded him of that when she mentioned the dead human in the bathtub upstairs. She was so _nice_ about it too, so blue about it even though dead people could be frightening.  
  
“We have to go,” Kara told him, looking towards the door with a yellow sort of look, “There are people outside looking for us. They may come in here.”  
Ralph froze.  
  
But then he hid them, hid them under the stairs and covered the little nook with things so that nobody would see and that was good because the door opened and RED there was a serious serious android with dark squinting, probing, what-are-you-hiding eyes that was looking for them.  
  
“I won’t hurt you,” He’d said all soothing-like as Ralph stood in the middle of the room red-red-red because this wasn’t a human this was an _android_ and androids could do things better than humans, including finding other androids hiding in a house, and that was what this android did. He found them under the stairs and Ralph JUMPED on him and gave Kara and the little girl time to run, and they ran ran ran out of the house and the serious android went and ran after them with the human.  
  
Ralph was alone and _red._  
  
He knew there were people outside that might make him dangerously red, so he ran ran ran too.  
  
Troublesome. So, so troublesome leaving his house behind. He’d been plucking at the weedy grass and checking the soil for how well it would hold plants and flowers, and he’d just had to _leave_ it.  
  
But he wouldn’t have met Annabelle if he hadn’t.  
  
Ralph ran until he found places that didn’t have many humans, places too dangerous for humans, like his house, and this building was _tall_ with so many rooms, so many places to hide.  
  
Just for now, though, because this wasn’t a place for flowers.  
  
And Ralph had only been hiding for a little while, just a little while, when he’d heard noises at the door and gone yellow-red-yellow-red because really, _another_ visitor, _another_ human, _another_ android coming to bother him?  
  
But Annabelle was different.  
  
Oh, Ralph was wary at first, because Kara and the little girl had been so nice, so much nicer than his usual _human_ visitors who hit him and cursed at him until he went all red and then _they_ went all red. But Annabelle, no, she tried to run away, _scared_ because of Ralph and tried to rush out of the apartment on her hands and knees (like Ralph had when he’d crawled out of the basement, dragging, _dragging_ across the floor).  
  
He stopped her, he saw Annabelle’s face. Her _face_ , her face, it was all burnt and cracked, different but the same as his, the eye broken and crumbling and melted in the socket. Ralph knew then that Annabelle wasn’t going to hurt him, because she was scared and hurt and looked probably a _lot_ like he had after the basement.  
  
Annabelle said that bad humans had hurt her.  
  
Ralph said that bad humans had hurt him.  
  
And it had been okay between them, because Ralph knew how scared Annabelle was and oh, it was important not to get mad, not to go _red_ in front of her when it could scare her so bad again. But it wasn’t a problem because Annabelle was quiet and calm and nice nice nice like Kara, and she didn’t scare Ralph at all, so he didn’t go red.  
  
Ralph and Annabelle stayed together after that. They ran away when the bad humans with the big, scary guns had come to get the androids, and they stayed together when they were caught and thrown into the truck with the androids that said that the humans were going to _kill_ them and other red things that made Ralph scared and Annabelle cry. Ralph hugged Annabelle, and it was the first time he’d ever hugged anyone ever. It felt very nice, especially as scared and red as he was.  
  
The humans made them take their clothes off, made them deactivate their skins, and Annabelle had cried and not wanted to and so Ralph had to do it for her because Annabelle was going to get shot by the humans if she didn’t and Ralph didn’t want to watch that anymore than he wanted to be back in the basement with the teenagers and their red-making ways.  
  
The humans kept them in a big cage with other androids.  
  
And then they let them go.  
  
No, no, they didn’t let them go, that was wrong… Markus let them go. Markus and his people came in and set them free so they could go back home. All the humans left the city and Ralph was so very _blue_ to hear that.  
  
He brought Annabelle back to his house, and there they stayed.  
  
Ralph did not Make a Mistake in bringing Annabelle the house. Annabelle was a good roommate, a good friend, maybe his first real friend ever. Annabelle gave gentle touches. Gentle, gentle touches, on his arms and knee and head, gave him warm hugs and Ralph was _blue_ when she did that, so blue and calm and it was so nice because Ralph didn’t get to feel that good blue too much. His life was yellow yellow yellow sprinkled with dark red.  
  
Sometimes Annabelle woke up crying, woke up shaking and hugging herself because she’d had nightmares of the bad humans that had hurt her. Ralph, who was maybe asleep or maybe not, would inch over and lie beside her so she could feel him nearby. Sometimes it helped with his nightmares too, the ones where he was back in the basement with the teenagers and the red things they’d done that had made him bleed blue, even though _he’d_ been red. Even without the touching it was nice to wake up all red and remember that Ralph wasn’t in the basement, he was in his house and Annabelle was nearby somewhere.  
  
Ralph knew what made him go red and yellow, but he couldn’t always tell what made Annabelle go the bad colors. One time, he found a bird in the yard and _sneaky sneaky_ snuck up on it and killed it, stabbed it with his knife. He brought it into Annabelle, all blue and proud of what he’d done, but-  
  
“ _Ralph!_ ” Annabelle had yelped and stared at it and him in shock. “Why would you do that?” She’d asked, and Ralph saw surprise, saw surprise and-  
  
Fear?  
  
He went yellow, sad yellow and scared yellow.  
  
“Sorry,” He whimpered, “Sorry, sorry, Ralph is sorry. Ralph killed the bird for Annabelle.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Why?” Ralph echoed.  
  
“What would I do with a dead bird?”  
  
Ralph thought on that for a long time. “Ralph doesn’t know,” He muttered, shuffling in place, dead bird dangling from one hand.  
  
Annabelle had smiled, but it was a small smile, not the one she did when she was blue. “I appreciate you trying to give me a gift, Ralph,” She said gently, “But I don’t need a dead bird. They’re not hurting us, so let’s not hurt them, okay?”  
  
Ralph nodded frantically. “Okay. Okay.”  
  
Markus said the same thing. Markus was a very important android, who spoke with the humans about giving androids rights, and he’d saved Ralph and Annabelle from the recall centers. Ralph was leery around strangers, androids or not, but Markus was a good android and he liked talking to him- he’d even offered to have Ralph’s face and other scars fixed even though Ralph had said no. Markus had also said that Annabelle was right, that there was no point to killing animals. “It’s a little mean, isn’t it?” Markus had suggested gently, “Because they aren’t really doing anything to you, are they? They’re just living their lives, like you are.”  
  
Yes, Ralph had agreed, like with Annabelle, yes, they were right, killing animals was a bad idea. He wouldn’t do it anymore, if only because his friends didn’t like it and thought it was bad. He didn’t do it anymore after that, promised he’d only do it if a bad animal tried to hurt them, like a rabid dog or something.  
  
After the recall centers, after the humans all left the city, Ralph and Annabelle had mostly stayed home. Sometimes they ventured out, and once or twice Ralph had met with some other WR600s like Annabelle’s friend George but also a few others named Eddie and Declan and Henry. But mostly Ralph liked to stay home because he liked his house, liked his nice, safe walls and everything he knew. He knew what was in the house, but he didn’t know what was _outside_ the house, and so it was easier to stay blue if he stayed home.  
  
Most of the time.  
  
Even when he was in the yard Ralph would sometimes see androids walking by. Some would wave, or say hello, and Ralph would tentatively wave back. _They think Ralph is okay,_ he thought, _and they’ll know he’s not okay if he talks too much._ Most of them were nice enough not to make him feel yellow by staring at his face too much. Some of the androids he saw had cuts and scars too, and he felt better about those ones.  
  
One day Ralph was kneeling in the dirt in the yard and plucking at the grass, because he wanted to make the dirt ready for flowers in the spring. When it snowed he had to push the mounds of it away so he could get at the dirt, and that was hard. But it was even harder to pluck at the grass once he got to it, because it was so hard and cold from the snow, so it took so much time.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Ralph’s head jerked up, LED yellow. There were three androids standing at the fence, which Ralph had made shorter so that the light could get in when spring came around. It was all broken and splintery at the top, but maybe he could fix that later. Even though they were androids, Ralph was still very yellow at the sight of them, because he really didn’t talk to too many other people besides Annabelle and Markus and he wasn’t really good at it. Talking for too long made it obvious he’d been broken.  
  
“Digging,” He responded, fingers twitching and numb from the cold ground.  
  
There was a female android, who cocked her head at him. “Are you a WR600?”  
  
Ralph stayed kneeling in the dirt and snow, rolling a clump of dirt between his fingers and trying to get blue again. But blue was _hard_ when there were strangers around, because Ralph couldn’t always tell what strangers were going to do, not like Annabelle and Markus. “Yes.”  
  
She gave him a funny look, the way one of the teenagers had after they’d cut him open and his blood had started flowing out. ( _Ugh! It’s bleeding!_ ) “Why are you digging in the dirt like you’re a slave?”  
  
Ralph was taken aback by the question, confused- he’d been digging because he wanted to make the dirt ready for flowers… What was this confusing stuff about _slaves?_ “What?”  
  
“Aren’t you deviant?”  
  
“Yes,” Ralph said, because it was true: He’d gone in the basement a normal android and then he’d left a deviant because the teenagers had broken him so bad that he couldn’t obey orders anymore. Annabelle and Markus were the same: They’d gotten broken and stopped being normal too.  
  
“Then why are you following your programming?”  
  
Something clicked- Ralph’s thoughts got so jumbled and he couldn’t always keep them where he wanted them to be, but this clicked like magic in his head: He was a WR600 that was gardening even though he was a deviant- ergo, he was acting like a… Slave? No, that couldn’t be right, that was silly- he must have misunderstood.  
  
“Because I want to plant flowers in spring?”  
  
“Give up, Alexa,” A male android to the female’s left snorted, “I think this one’s gone ‘round the bend.” He twirled a finger around his ear.  
  
“Ralph doesn’t understand,” Ralph remarked uneasily, the yellow getting deeper and deeper because he didn’t understand what that male android was trying to say, but the _tone_ he had said it in made Ralph feel bad, made him feel like the android was saying something mean about him even though he couldn’t understand it.  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
Annabelle had come out, and Ralph went BLUE-yellow-BLUE-YELLOW-blue-yellow because he was happy happy and _relieved_ that she was there because Annabelle could talk to other people better than he could, she talked to her friends George and Bryson all the time like a normal person, and yellow because he was afraid the male android would say something mean to her too.  
  
“Is there a problem?” Annabelle asked the androids.  
  
[ _Are they being mean to you, Ralph?_ ]  
  
She asked that in Ralph’s head.  
  
But he didn’t get a chance to respond because, “No problem,” Alexa said, “Just asking your friend here why he’s gardening.”  
  
“Like a slave.”  
  
Annabelle’s head whipped towards him, her one visible eye wide. “Like a _what?_ ”  
  
“Like a slave to his programming,” Alexa responded all _blue-_ like, like she was saying something important. “Why would a deviant follow his programming? Why would any android enslaved by a human want to do the things in freedom they were _forced_ to do as a slave?”  
  
“You don’t know how we feel about humans,” Annabelle said, looking kind of _red_ even though her LED was blue.  
  
“He doesn’t really look like the kind that’s real fond of humans.” Alexa remarked, looking towards Ralph, and Ralph frowned because how could she tell _that_ just by looking at him? “Looks like you haven’t had great luck with them either.”  
  
Annabelle turned her head away quick quick quick, and Ralph felt himself get _real_ close to red. “Don’t make fun of her,” He snapped as he stood up, _so_ close to red because Annabelle was very very _sad_ about what the bad humans had done to her face, so sad that she hid it by putting her hair over that side of it so no one would see, and-  
  
Oh. _That_ was why she thought he didn’t like humans: Because of his face.  
  
Did he have his knife?  
  
_Yes_ , he did, he _did_ have his knife, and maybe he would wave it around to make this mean android and her friends go away.  
  
“I’m not making fun,” Alexa said, “I’m telling the truth. Obviously neither of you has had good experiences with humans.”  
  
“Go away,” Ralph growled. “Markus is dealing with the humans. Ralph and Annabelle don’t need to be afraid of them anymore.”  
  
Alexa and her friends had _laughed_ , and Ralph did _not_ like those laughs because they were mean laughs, mocking laughs, laughs like the ones the teenagers had done in the basement when he’d begged them to let him go, that he wouldn’t tell anyone, that he was hurting real bad and he just wanted to go back to his flowers-  
  
Red, red, _red._  
  
“Markus isn’t doing _shit._ You’d be better off with us, we can actually stop the humans from doing this to you again-”  
  
“Leave.” Annabelle was glaring at Alexa out of her good eye, and _she_ was red too.  
  
“Don’t you even-?”  
  
“ _I said **leave!**_ ” Annabelle screamed, picking up a handful of snow and throwing it at them, and Ralph almost went blue just from the shock of it: Annabelle never yelled, and Annabelle never _threw_. That wasn't an Annabelle-thing to do.  
  
Alexa shook her head and walked away with her friends and so Ralph didn’t have to pull out his knife even though he _wanted_ to now, because Annabelle’s lips were doing that thing they did right when she was going to cry and he hated hated _hated_ it when she cried, it made him red.  
  
“Annabelle,” He said, and carefully put his arms around her. Annabelle let him, and he brought her back inside so the mean androids couldn’t see them anymore. He hugged Annabelle until she was blue again, and she said she never ever wanted to talk about those androids again and that if they came back Ralph should come inside and not talk to them.  
  
“They’re assholes,” She’d said, voice shaky and crackling with sadness.  
  
“Mean androids,” Ralph had agreed, nuzzling his face into her hair. “Mean, mean, mean. Ralph doesn’t want to see them again.”  
  
Annabelle had hugged him back, and Ralph felt much, _much_ more blue.  
  
Ralph loved Annabelle.  
  
Ralph found ways to show love, to show how _blue_ she made him feel, how happy he was that she was with him. It was a process, changing and fixing when he Made Mistakes like bringing her dead animals instead of live ones; Ralph made _her_ blue with flowers, and by keeping himself blue, and by talking to her about things that weren’t red-making and scary or bad, like the humans that had burned her face and eye. Ralph looked for new ways to show Annabelle how nice she was and how much he loved her.  
  
One night, he came up with something new.  
  
Annabelle was talking, and telling him about the _Eden_ _Club?_ It was a place where humans had gone to have _sex_ with androids. Annabelle used odd words like that, because she was a WR400 who’d been made for _sex_ and Ralph was a WR600 that had been made for gardening, not sex, so he didn’t understand the word so well. Annabelle explained, said that humans _and androids_ felt good, felt _blue_ when the parts between their legs were touched the right way; humans had liked Annabelle because she’d touched them the right way, and because she let them touch her that way too.  
  
Humans _and_ androids felt good.  
  
_And_ androids.  
  
So Ralph had a thought.  
  
But it was a maybe Making a Mistake thought, and he was yellow.  
  
Ralph didn’t look at her, down down down at his shoes. “Did Annabelle like it when the humans touched her like that?”  
  
A pause. “It depended on the touching. Some people were… Rougher than others.” _Rough_ like the way the red-haired girl had yanked on his hair, dragged her nails down his face. The way she and the green-shirt girl had opened his casing and _pulled_ on the parts of him he never used, because gardener androids didn’t need those between-the-legs pieces to do their jobs like WR400s did. The thought of humans being rough with Annabelle made Ralph want to go red, but he didn’t.  
  
“Would Annabelle…” Ralph hesitated, rocking back and forth slightly because he was _nervous_ , all yellow and worried that Annabelle would be mad for him asking, “Would Annabelle like Ralph to touch her like that?” Ralph still didn’t look at her.  
  
There was a long pause, and Ralph got scared that Annabelle was going yellow or red. But then she said, “Do you want to touch me like that, Ralph?”  
  
“Annabelle doesn’t have to, she doesn’t, Ralph won’t if Annabelle doesn’t want to, Ralph would never-” Ralph was frantic and yellow yellow almost red with making sure that Annabelle knew he wouldn’t ever ever EVER do it unless she said yes.  
  
“Ralph, shh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Annabelle said quickly, reaching out and rubbing his arm. “I know you’d never hurt me, it’s okay. I just… I’m curious where you got the idea from.”  
  
Ralph shrugged awkwardly, still not looking. “Annabelle said the touching makes humans and androids feel good. Ralph likes Annabelle, wants to make her feel good too. If she wants it.”  
He couldn’t tell what Annabelle’s face was saying. He had trouble sometimes doing that, telling what people meant with their faces instead of their words, and it scared him when he couldn’t. Was Annabelle upset? Was Annabelle angry? Was Annabelle going to go away and leave him?  
  
“Okay, Ralph,” Annabelle said softly, squeezing his hand. “If you want to do that, we can do that.”  
  
Oh, oh, Ralph was very yellow now, very nervous, worked up from before when he thought Annabelle was upset with him, still anxious from the asking part of this, and because Annabelle had said yes but he wasn’t sure he knew what to do and he wanted to make her feel good but also that would mean asking her and he didn’t know what to ask first, and even if he did what she said what if he did something wrong and she got upset and-  
  
It was a bad idea.  
  
Ralph couldn’t.  
  
He couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t because he’d do something wrong and he’d Make a Mistake and he’d hurt Annabelle the way those teenagers hurt him, he’d pull too hard he’d be too rough and he’d make Annabelle sad and scared, he’d make her cry and want to go away so she wouldn’t be hurt anymore, and he didn’t want Annabelle to go away, she made him feel so _blue_ and nice and the thought of making her sad and scared made him sad, scary red and he was so _scared-_  
  
“I can’t,” Ralph whined, “I can’t, I can’t.”  
  
Annabelle put her arms around him. “You don’t have to, Ralph,” She murmured, “I love you anyway.”  
  
Ralph let out a sob.  
  
Annabelle cuddled him, snuggled him until he was blue again, face pressed into her sweater and smelling her nice Annabelle smell. Such a relief, such a blue-feeling to know that she loved him even though he’d offered her something and then panicked and cried like a baby.  
  
Later on, Ralph was sitting on the porch and he’d suddenly felt… Clear. He wondered why he had offered to touch Annabelle that way, knowing how those girls had touched him and knowing that it would remind him of what had happened in the basement. It was always a good idea to avoid things that reminded him of the basement, given how _red_ it tended to make him.  
  
But this wasn’t the first time he’d felt so strangely clear. After he’d met Annabelle, after the recall center, after returning to his house and generally being nice and blue for a long time, Ralph had increasingly enjoyed moments of clarity.  
  
He’d been pulling weeds in the yard, really digging deep to get them out of the dirt, and he was blue. Then there had been a moment when he’d suddenly stopped, when he’d been _so_ blue that he’d looked up and around and realized that he’d been kneeling in one place for half an hour, and he’d not found any weeds, but he’d kept digging into the hard, cold earth. Why had he done that? He should have just moved onto the next spot. It was silly, and wasting time, and… _Why_ was he doing it? Could he even plant anything worthwhile in this dirt?  
  
And then there was the time when he’d seen the squirrel in the yard, and he’d wanted to catch it and kill it for food, like the humans did, but then… Then he’d stopped. Not because he’d remembered that Annabelle didn’t like it, but because… Well, androids don’t _eat._ What was the point of killing a squirrel? He didn’t need to, it wouldn’t serve a purpose, and… Wouldn’t it be like what the teenagers had done to him? Hurting and killing for no reason? He’d done it many times before without thinking because it made so much sense, and in that moment… Right then, it didn’t.  
  
Then there was the RA9 scribblings, the moment when Ralph had realized that he’d scratched the word all over the kitchen walls and was doing it _again_ , and he’d stopped, confused, wondering why he was writing it, why he’d done _all_ of it when RA9 meant literally nothing to him.  
  
And after Markus started coming, and especially when he was there, Ralph began to have more moments when he was clear, when things suddenly seemed very _real_ , very… Solid and sense-making to him. His thoughts didn’t race. He wasn’t confused. He realized with such sharp focus that he was doing something _odd_ that didn’t make any sense, and instead of just plugging ahead and doing it anyway, he stopped and asked _why?_ _Why_ was he doing it?  
  
Maybe it was because Annabelle and Markus asked _why_ so much: _Why_ did Ralph kill animals, _why_ was Ralph writing RA9 on the walls, _why_ was Ralph so bothered by the idea of having his scar fixed? Markus had asked that last one, had offered to find an android technician that could help him, that could run a diagnostic and fix Ralph’s face so it was clean and smooth and not ripped open anymore.  
  
Markus was nice, but Ralph could tell he didn’t understand.  
  
It had been his smooth, unblemished face that had invited the attack.  
  
_Cut him_ , the blue-eyed boy had said, _I want to see what’s underneath._  
  
The boys held the knife in the fire and the girls had done the cutting, and Ralph had never been redder in _ever_ in his life. There had been blue, too, but not good, calm blue, but the blue that came when he bled and cracked under the knife. So no, Ralph didn’t want his scar repaired, even when he was clear and understood that it would make people not stare at him, that he’d be less obvious. The humans, they could all see the blue and the wires and the damage, they could all see what was underneath, and maybe they wouldn’t want to cut him anymore.  
  
Hopefully.  
  
Androids were another problem altogether.  
  
They wanted to cut for different reasons.  
  
Humans were back in the city now, and Markus said that the police and government promised that they wouldn’t bring Ralph or any other androids to jail for bad things they’d done during or before the evacuation. “But that means you have to be really good, Ralph,” Markus told him the night before the evacuation was due to end, “You have to be really good. You can’t cut anyone. You can’t wave your knife at them. You’ll get arrested for that. Don’t even carry it around.”  
  
Ralph didn’t like that idea, didn’t like that idea at all. His knife was the only thing that could protect him from humans and bad androids, like the ones who ran with Alexa and her friends who didn’t like Markus, the ones that attacked other androids. Annabelle had told him about them, got the news from her friends when she went to visit.  
  
“You can still keep the knife,” Markus had assured him, “But you can’t bring it with you outside. You can’t be carrying a weapon on the street.” He’d looked sad, very sad as he’d said, “You know you have trouble with your temper sometimes, Ralph. When you go red, sometimes you do things you don’t mean to. Not carrying a knife will be more of a protection to you than not having it.”  
  
Ralph loved Markus, Markus was so good, but he didn’t understand.  
  
He’d never been in the basement.  
  
Thankfully, Ralph didn’t leave home very often, so he really didn’t bring his knife out with him.  
  
He saw the humans from the windows just like he’d seen them before the evacuation, and Ralph was yellow more often than not. He did what he’d done before the evacuation, slipping out at night when there weren’t many humans around to see him. Annabelle was nervous too, but with her hair over her face and her scars hidden she could at least pass for a human, so she went out to get blue blood and news from Jericho, and she came back and told Ralph everything, anything he wanted to know.  
  
“Things have gone okay,” She said carefully, “It’s… Tense. But humans and androids are coexisting for now.”  
  
_For now._  
  
That was why Ralph kept his knife.  
  
Maybe if he hadn’t lost it the night the soldiers had found them, he and Annabelle wouldn’t have ended up in a recall center.  
  
Ralph was antsy antsy antsy and even the walls of his house separating him from the _everyone_ outside didn’t feel like enough to keep them safe.  
  
One day, Ralph had been upstairs, peeling wallpaper off the walls. Annabelle had asked him to stay inside for the day, and when he’d asked why she’d taken his hand and shown him his fingers: Ralph went yellow, _surprise!,_ when he saw that the skin had been ripped away there, revealing his casing. “You’ve been pulling at the dirt too much,” Annabelle said quietly, “You’re hurting yourself.”  
  
Ralph hadn’t noticed at all.  
  
So he peeled at the wallpaper, wondering if maybe they could make the walls look better somehow- not _too_ much better, because then the humans might want the house back, but better than it was now. He didn’t know how long he’d been at it when he’d heard a _THUMP_ from downstairs, like something hitting the wall or the floor, and then _voices_ , voices from below, and he went yellow out of panic because who would come into the house without knocking, Markus certainly wouldn’t and neither would his friends and Annabelle was already down-  
  
_Annabelle was downstairs._  
  
Those voices sounded loud, loud and, and- _mad_. Too many voices talking, and Ralph was reminded of those teenagers as they’d walked through the park and chatter-chatter-chattered until they’d stopped next to Ralph and started talking to him, and he hadn’t noticed that Murphy and Declan and Eddie had moved onto different areas and that he was alone, no one to notice when they’d pulled him away towards their car.  
  
Ralph inched his way to the stairs, and it was only once he’d made his way down the stairs just enough to see the living room, that he saw what was happening:  
  
These were androids, not humans; they still had their LEDs.  
  
There were four of them, two AP700s, a PL600, and an AX400.  
  
And one of the AP700s had Annabelle pinned to the wall by her throat.  
  
Ralph’s LED went RED RED RED  
  
**[STRESS LEVEL 100%]**  
  
RED RED RED NO NO NO NO NO DON’T TOUCH DON’T TOUCH  
  
**[*WARNING* CRITICAL STRESS LEVELS]**  
  
KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL  
  
**[CORE TEMPERATURE RISING]**  
  
GET HIM GET HIM GET HIM STOP HIM STOP HIM  
  
**[BIOCOMPONENT #000134 DESTABILIZING]**  
  
Ralph went dark.


	2. Chapter 2

[ ** _CYBERLIFE INC_ ]**  
  
**[…]**  
  
**[…][…]**  
  
**[…][…][…]**  
  
**[…REBOOTING…]**  
  
**[…SOFTWARE INITIALIZING…]**  
  
**[MODEL: WR600]**  
  
**[SERIAL #: 021 753 034]**  
  
**[LOADING OS]**  
  
**[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION]**  
  
**[INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS…] [OK]**  
  
**[INITIALIZING AI ENGINE…] [OK]**  
  
**[…BIOCOMPONENT #000134 STABILIZING…] [OK]**  
  
**[…BIOCOMPONENT #004621 OFFLINE…]**  
  
**[…BIOCOMPONENT #004561 DAMAGED…]**  
  
**[MEMORY STATUS…]**  
  
**[ALL SYSTEMS] [OK]**  
  
**[READY]**  
  
[---]  
  
Ralph woke.  
  
His system came back online slowly, and small whirs, clicks, and rumblings came from his body, but especially his head and torso.  
  
**[WARNING: CRITICAL DAMAGE TO FACIAL CASING QUADRANTS #2, #4]**  
  
**[WARNING: SKIN COVERING UNABLE TO INITIALIZE ON THE FOLLOWING:**  
  
**FRONTAL TORSO CASING**  
  
**LEFT THIGH CASING**  
  
**LEFT ARM CASING**  
  
**SEEK REPAIRS IMMEDIATELY.]**

Ralph wasn’t bothered. He got those warnings every time he woke up, a reminder that he’d been severely damaged. He dismissed the warnings without a thought, and then looked around.

Where was he?  
  
Ralph didn’t recognize this place. It wasn’t his house, certainly- it was far too clean. He was in a bed that was not his, in a room that he didn’t remember ever seeing before. Ralph wasn’t wearing his clothing, either- he was in a t-shirt and thin pants that were definitely not his. He didn’t recognize this place at all, and he could feel his stress level creeping higher, from the easy blue he’d had towards yellow.  
  
What had happened?  
  
How had he gotten-  
  
Loud voices. People in the house.  
  
That android, with his hand around Annabelle’s throat.  
  
Ralph’s eyes widened in panic, and he went red.  
  
“ _Annabelle!_ ”  
  
He scrambled out of the bed in a panic, unsure of where he was going or where to look because Annabelle was somewhere being hurt by bad androids and Ralph was red red red so _red_ and _bad_ because he’d _left her alone-!_  
  
“Ralph, Ralph, calm down.”  
  
There was a hand on his arm, and Ralph jerked back quick quick quick and slammed against the wall. There was a female android with dark skin and eyes, and Ralph didn’t know her, she was a stranger, and this was only making him more red because Annabelle was getting hurt and he wasn’t there to help-  
  
“Ralph,” The lady-android said, “Annabelle is alive. The technicians are looking her over to make sure she’s alright, but she was only a little banged up in the attack. I promise you she’s safe."  
  
“Ralph doesn’t know you,” He croaked, shaking his head, “Ralph doesn’t know you, Ralph doesn’t trust you.”  
  
“That’s understandable,” The android said. “My name is Adrienne. And I promise that if you come and talk to me for a few minutes, I’ll bring Annabelle in right after. Can we do that?”  
  
Ralph eyed her warily, LED rolling back to yellow. Bad androids came to his house without invitation and attacked Annabelle, and now he was in a strange place with stranger-androids he didn’t know? He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at _all_. But what could he do? Ralph was so overwhelmed and he didn’t know where Annabelle was or if there were more bad androids hiding here somewhere. Maybe he could see if Adrienne was telling the truth before trying anything else.  
  
“Okay.” Ralph went back to the bed and sat down. Adrienne turned around to grab a chair, and he saw **KL900** stamped across the back of her dress.  
  
KL900. Those were…  
  
…Ralph didn’t know what sort of androids those were. Doctors? He’d never dealt with doctors before. Not android doctors, certainly, because they looked after humans, not other androids.  
  
Adrienne pulled up a chair, sat down, and smiled. She folded her hands neatly on her lap. “There. I can see that you’re still in the sixtieth percentile-” Ralph blinked at her in confusion, and she nodded. “Sorry- I see that you’re still distressed. Your LED is yellow. I meant that the exact percentage of your stress was in the sixties.”  
  
Ralph nodded slightly. “Right.”  
  
“Can you try to get your LED back to blue?”  
  
Ralph tried. He tried to believe that Adrienne was telling the truth and that Annabelle was alive and safe and that he would see her once they were done talking. Slowly, his stress-levels went down enough that he was back in blue-territory, somewhere in the high forties- calm, but alert.  
  
Now that he thought about it… Adrienne probably _was_ telling the truth. Ralph didn’t remember what happened after he’d seen Annabelle being pinned by that other android, but it was possible he’d been hurt. It was possible that he’d been brought to this hospital-place to be fixed, and it would have had to have been Annabelle that brought him there. After all, why would they bring him here just to do him more harm when they’d done plenty at the house? This didn’t look like a place where people were tortured, not like the basement.  
  
Slowly, Ralph’s stress went to the low forties. He didn’t need to be too alert right now, did he? He’d just had to think about it for a moment, and he’d rationalized why he and Annabelle were probably safe.  
  
“How do you feel now?”  
  
“I feel…” Ralph thought for a moment, really _thought_ about it. “…Calm. I feel calm.”  
  
And…  
  
Clear.  
  
Ralph felt clearer than he had before, less confused, less jumpy and distracted. His thoughts were all in one place, not in a nice, straight line, but in a hallway where he could at least keep track of them all. It was how he’d been able to conclude that he and Annabelle weren’t in any danger, that Adrienne was telling the truth: Because he could connect the dots faster and better than before.  
  
…Why hadn’t he been able to do that before?  
  
Adrienne smiled. “Would it be alright if I asked you some questions, Ralph? I want to give you a little test.”  
  
Ralph frowned. “Test?”  
  
“Yes,” Adrienne said, nodding. “It’s like a… Like a diagnostic. When you run a diagnostic on yourself, you’re testing your body, asking it questions and making sure it’s running properly. I want to ask you some questions to make sure _you’re_ running properly.”  
  
“I’m running properly,” Ralph said, still confused. “I’m not getting any warning signs about my biocomponents.” Beyond the usual, anyway, but it should be obvious to her that his face was damaged.  
  
“Let me rephrase: I want to ask you questions to make sure your _mind_ is working, not your body. Is that alright?”  
  
Ralph shifted uncomfortably. The idea made him uneasy, because he knew he’d been a little _off_ since the basement; Alexa’s friend had pointed it out, and he hadn’t been so nice about it either. Adrienne seemed nice, but would she think he’d ‘gone ‘round the bend’ if he started acting funny? “Okay.”  
  
“Wonderful. So, I’ll ask you a question, and all I ask in return is that you answer me completely honestly, even if you think it’s not an answer I want to hear. Alright?”  
  
“Alright,” Ralph echoed. It didn’t seem hard.  
  
“First question: Your clothing. Your original clothing, I mean. It seems like you’ve been wearing them for a long time, since before you were deviant. Is that right?”  
  
“Yes,” Ralph said.  
  
“Why did you keep wearing it after you went deviant, when you had access to other clothing?”  
  
_How does she know I had access to other clothing?_ But she’d asked him to answer the question, not ask his own. “I don’t know.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
Ralph nodded slowly. “Yes- I mean, I don’t know why.”  
  
“What if I told you that your clothing was damaged,” Adrienne asked, “And had to be thrown away? How would you feel about that? Just say whatever words you feel describes it best.”  
  
Troublesome: He didn’t have anything else to wear, and he assumed what he was wearing now belonged to this hospital-place and that they’d need it back. But he stayed blue. “It would… Bother me.”  
  
“And why would it bother you?”  
  
“I don’t have anything else to wear when I leave.” Ralph stiffened a little; still blue, but inching towards yellow. “And you said that I could leave, right?”  
  
“Of course,” Adrienne assured him. “But ‘bothered’ is all you’d feel? It wouldn’t make you anxious, or scared?”  
  
“…No,” Ralph said. “Not really.”  
  
“That’s good,” Adrienne chuckled, “Because I’m afraid your clothing was pretty badly damaged in the attack. You can still wear it if you like when you leave, but we can give you something else if you want.”  
  
The _bothered_ feeling went away. Problem solved. “Oh. Okay.”  
  
“Excellent. Let’s try another one.” Adrienne was so calm, so easy to speak to, and Ralph felt pleasantly blue for all this talking with someone he’d just met that was asking so many questions. “What if I told you that you were going to have to relocate? What if I told you that you would have to leave your house behind?”  
  
Ralph felt discomfort, a brief flash to yellow. “Uncomfortable.”  
  
“What about scared?”  
  
Ralph hesitated. “A little scared, yes.”  
  
“Only a little?”  
  
“Yes.” He didn’t want to leave his house, his yard. It was safe there, safer than most places in Detroit for an android with a ruined face.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“It’s… My home. My yard. Ralph’s safe there. I don’t want to leave it. I had to before, and it was… Stressful. Frightening.”  
  
“Very good. Next question: What if I told you that you were going to have to walk home _alone_ during the day, when humans are out and about in Detroit? What if I told you you’d have to walk down the street with them, maybe bump into them here or there, or have them look at you and talk to you?”  
  
Ooh. Ralph didn’t like that idea. The yellow got a little worse. “Ralph doesn’t like that idea,” He said nervously, squeezing his fingers on his lap, eyes darting away from hers. “I don’t do well with humans.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“They… Scare Ralph. Hurt me.”  
  
“Because of the ones who did that to your face?”  
  
Ralph nodded, heart beating faster, inching towards red now at the memories of the basement. “Yes. Because of them.”  
  
Adrienne nodded gently. “It’s okay, Ralph. Do me a favor and take a deep breath.”  
  
Ralph did.  
  
“And again.”  
  
Ralph did.  
  
“And again.”  
  
Back to blue now, calm, but a little frazzled, dazed.  
  
“Are you calm again?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“Yes, I’m sure.”  
  
“Okay then, another question: Your friend, Annabelle: You’re very attached to her, aren’t you?”  
  
“I-” _love Annabelle._ But Ralph hesitated before blurting it out; was that something he should tell her? It felt personal. Maybe he shouldn’t. He didn’t mind if she knew, but maybe Annabelle would mind. He didn’t know if Adrienne was going to tell other people, either. “-I’m calm with her. She’s my friend.”  
  
“What if I told you that you that she was leaving, and not coming back? What if I told you that you weren’t going to see her again, that she was choosing to leave?’  
  
Ralph felt a spike into yellow, and it lingered there for a moment… Before slowly edging back down towards blue. The other questions had been realistic, had been about clothing and his house and being around humans, things he might actually have to do when he left this place.  
  
But Annabelle leaving… He didn’t believe that.  
  
“The _idea_ makes me sad.”  
  
“The idea,” Adrienne repeated. “Why only the idea?”  
  
Ralph swallowed. “Because… This is just a question. Annabelle’s not really leaving.”  
  
Adrienne’s lips twitched upwards slightly. “How do you know that?”  
  
“Because you’re asking me what-ifs,” Ralph said slowly. “All the questions are what-ifs. You’re not telling me. You’re asking me.”  
  
Adrienne smiled widely, as though he’d answered that question especially right compared to the others. “That’s right, Ralph, I am. Have you noticed anything about the way you’re talking now?”  
  
Ralph frowned. “What do you mean?”  
  
She cocked her head. “Did you not know that you were speaking in the third-person, Ralph? Instead of saying ‘you’re asking me’, before you would have said ‘you’re asking Ralph.’ You’ve only done it a few times while we spoke, when you were upset about something.”  
  
Ralph blinked. Now that she mentioned it… Yes, he remembered it. “Oh. I knew. I just…” Didn’t think about it? It was just something he’d done; he’d never really given it any thought.  
  
Now that he was thinking of it, now that he was clear and remembering things, there were a _lot_ of things he hadn’t thought about before he’d gone ahead and done them.  
  
“I only have one more question for you, Ralph,” Adrienne said, “And this is going to be a difficult one. I know it’s going to upset you, but I promise you I’m asking you to do this for a reason.”  
  
Ralph swallowed nervously. “Alright.”  
  
“I want you to pretend that Annabelle really _is_ leaving. I want you to try and tell me how you would feel if she came into this room and said she never wanted to see you again. Put yourself in that moment, in that place, and tell me how it makes you feel.”  
  
Ralph didn’t want to.  
  
He really, _really_ didn’t want to.  
  
But he did.  
  
He imagined Annabelle coming in with hurt-eyes and saying _You’re too scary, you’re too broken, I don’t feel safe around you,_ imagined her with a scared-face and looking at him like he was mean and bad like the teenagers in the basement, like he had hurt her as badly as they had hurt him-  
  
“Ralph is hurt,” He croaked, bending over and holding his head because it hurt and his LED was going _red_ , sad, unhappy, broken red. “Ralph is very, very hurt.”  
  
“Shh,” Adrienne said, leaning forward and putting her hand on his shoulder, squeezing and rubbing gently. “It’s alright. Annabelle’s not going anywhere. She’s right out in the hallway waiting for me to go get her. She’ll be here soon.”  
  
“Ralph doesn’t want Annabelle to leave, Ralph doesn’t have anyone else, not like Annabelle,” He babbled, too taken in with the perceived reality of the situation and consumed with the hurt, the fear, the pain of it.  
  
But eventually, it went away.  
  
Eventually, Ralph went back to blue, calmed down, and remembered what he’d temporarily forgotten: It was just a hypothetical question. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real, and yet… He’d completely forgotten he’d even been asked something. Ralph was shaken: He’d gone from clear to foggy in seconds, his high stress-level making him wild with panic. He couldn’t control himself, his feelings or his thoughts, and he’d been seconds away from losing control of his body, had wanted to tumble off the chair and go find Annabelle and make _sure_ that she wasn’t leaving.  
  
He was clear again. He knew better now.  
  
Just a question, that was all.  
  
But with clarity came a terrible, terrible realization, one that he’d had before but never as seriously as he understood it now.  
  
“There’s something very wrong with me,” Ralph whispered, “Isn’t there?”  
  
“It’s a combination of things. You were badly attacked by those teenagers, Ralph, and several of your biocomponents were damaged. Not _critically_ damaged, or you’d be dead- but damaged enough to impair your ability to function normally. The parts of your programming that help you with cognitive functions like problem-solving and stress-management were damaged, and we were able to repair some of that when we were repairing the damage from what happened earlier. Part of it, though, is mental: You were traumatized from the first attack and reacted to stressful stimuli accordingly.” She gave a sad little shrug, gaze sympathetic. “Mental wounds don’t heal so easily, and some of the physical damage is permanent. We can’t fix it without doing a complete reset on you, and I assume you don’t want that.”  
  
Ralph’s LED went yellow. “No, no, Ralph- _I_ don’t want that.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Adrienne assured, “We’d never do that without your consent. My point is that when you find yourself in the upper levels of your stress, when you’re getting into the 50s and up, you’re going to start finding yourself losing control like you did just now; the overheating of your biocomponents means your software and programming will go a little haywire. You’ll lose your ability to regulate your behavior and stress the way you are now, and in a bad situation it will feed itself: The more panicked you get, the more the situation may escalate, leading to more stress- you get my meaning. The good news is that fixing some of the damage that was done means it won’t be as easy for you to become as stressed as you did before, so those moments where you’re confused and edgy will be happening less and less.”  
  
Ralph nodded slowly. “So… I’ll stay clear? Like this?”  
  
“I don’t see why not, so long as you do your best to keep calm.”  
  
Then Ralph wanted to be calm. He wanted to be calm like he’d never been calm before. If calm meant that he didn’t do strange, illogical things that seemed scary to him when he was clear, then calm was what he had to be.  
  
Adrienne patted his arm and stood up. “That’s all the questions I have for you today, Ralph. I’ll go get Annabelle for you.”  
  
Ralph relaxed, eyes falling shut.  
  
“Ralph!”  
  
He opened them again when Annabelle came through the door. She ran to the bed and threw her arms around him, clutching him tightly. Ralph hugged her back, pressing his face into her shoulder and being relieved, so _relieved_ that she was alright, that she was up and moving and not in a bed like him.  
  
“Do you feel better than before?” Annabelle asked, pulling back to get a better look at him. “Do you feel good?”  
  
Ralph nodded, and she smiled brightly. “Yes, I feel better. A lot better, actually.”  
  
Annabelle smiled. “You sound better. You’re even talking differently.”  
  
“I know.” He froze, blue tipping close to yellow. “Are you hurt?”  
  
“No, no, I’m fine,” Annabelle said, waving her hand dismissively. “You were the one who got hurt.”  
  
But Ralph was fixated on her neck, because even though the skin was okay… There was the _slightest_ discoloration there, because androids could bruise just a _little_ bit- they never looked like human bruises, they looked almost like the skin had gone a little translucent- and they went away with some minor repair, a red flag that something had happened. He reached up, brushed his fingers across her throat.  
  
Yellow. _Big_ yellow. “They hurt Annabelle. Ralph wants to hurt them for it. Is it-” Ralph hesitated, squeezing his eyes shut; he was doing it again. “…Is it wrong for m-m- _me_ to want to hurt them?”  
  
“You already did. They were running scared, I promise.” Before, those words would have sent him into a panic: Annabelle had seen him make someone else scared, and the logic followed that that would scare _her_. But now he saw it better, understood that she was okay with it because he’d been scaring people who scared her, who’d hurt her- right, right! Just like he had the night he’d said he’d kill the bad humans if they came back for her, and she’d thanked him and said she’d felt better.  
  
Okay. It was okay.  
  
They sat together for a while. Ralph was noticing little things now, like how when he hugged Annabelle his damaged cheek had rubbed against her sweater and he hadn’t felt a thing, and that was because the synthetic nerves there were permanently damaged. He really noticed for the first time exactly how _obvious_ the damage to his body was, on his face and eye and other parts when he was undressed. Ralph had known the damage was there, of course, and knew that it was noticeable to others, but it was only now that he realized exactly how _graphic_ it was.  
  
They hadn’t explained to him exactly which biocomponents had been damaged and how the damage had affected him, but meditating on these things now made Ralph a little anxious: There were so many dots he hadn’t connected before, so many things he’d done since going deviant that seemed completely illogical to him now. He realized, with no small amount of surprise, that this was kind of what he’d been like before the teenagers and the basement.  
  
Not _completely_ like he’d been, but closer than he’d been to it for a long, long time.  
  
A knock came on the door, and Ralph pulled away from Annabelle, quickly alert. “It’s alright,” She assured him. “Come in!” When the door opened an older human man stepped in along with-  
_Yellow._ This was the serious-serious android that had made Kara and- and _Alice_ _,_ that was her name, run run run-  
  
Ralph shut his eyes, took a breath.  
  
_Calm._  
  
Back to blue.  
  
This was the android that had come to find Kara and Alice. Ralph had jumped on him so they could get away. Had Ralph seen him somewhere else? Possibly. He couldn’t remember. But this android, he _had_ to have recognized Ralph by now, because Ralph knew he was very recognizable with his scar, but he didn’t say anything or get mad or mention the incident. That was nice of him.  
  
“We, uh, just wanted to update you on the whole-” The human waved his hand vaguely, “…Home invasion-thing. We found the guys who did it.”  
  
“You did?” Annabelle exclaimed.  
  
“We did. They were very noticeable with the big slash-marks on their faces and arms, and even if they weren’t, McGruff the evidence-licker here can detect traces of blue blood.” Ralph, Annabelle, and even the police-android stared at him, and he looked at them all in disbelief. “McGruff the Crime Dog? Seriously? Goddamn it, I’m surrounded by children. Oh, by the way, I’m Lieutenant Anderson, and this is Connor, I know I introduced myself before but-” Anderson looked apologetically at Ralph. “-uh, you weren’t there for it.”  
  
“Nice to meet you,” Ralph said quietly, keeping close to Annabelle. He hesitated, still nervous, but then said, “I’ve met you before.” He nodded to Connor.  
  
Connor nodded slowly. “The house. I was chasing a deviant and a little girl. I… Apologize for coming into your home like that.”  
  
Ralph shrugged a little. “Sorry I jumped on you.”  
  
Connor smiled, and Ralph did too.  
  
“Alright then, now that that’s out of the way…” Anderson gave a nonchalant shrug of his own, “As far as I’m concerned, it was self-defense. Those bastards were asking for it. Maybe they’ve learned they shouldn’t go breakin’ into peoples’ houses and beating on them for no goddamn reason.” He looked between them. “You want to press charges against them?”  
  
Ralph looked to Annabelle. “Should we?”  
  
Annabelle gave a little nod. “I think we should. They really hurt you.”  
  
“Personally,” Anderson said, “I second that. These guys got it into their heads that they could swagger into any place they want and do what they want. Guys like this gotta see consequences for what they do, or they’ll just keep doing it.”  
  
Bad androids being punished; bad _people_ being punished for hurting him. That was… New. “Why did they do it?”  
  
Anderson shrugged. “We still have to ask them, but I guarantee you the reason will boil down to ‘because I felt like it’. I’ve seen the type before.”  
  
Ralph curled an arm around Annabelle’s. “I want to press charges.”  
  
Annabelle nodded. “I do too.”  
  
Anderson grinned. “Excellent!”  
  
“We’ll return to the station and formally charge the suspects,” Connor said, breaking the silence he’d been in since speaking with Ralph. “And we’ll contact you when we have further information.”  
  
“Thank you,” Annabelle said.  
  
“Not a problem. You kids have a good night.” As they stepped out the door, Ralph heard Anderson say to Connor, “No, really, you _seriously_ don’t know who McGruff the Crime Dog is?”  
  
“When are we going home?” Ralph asked.  
  
“They want you to stay until morning,” Annabelle said. “Just to make sure everything’s running properly. They did some repairs while you were out, but I told them you didn’t want your scars repaired.” She looked a little nervous. “Was that okay? I know you’ve refused before.”  
  
“It’s fine.” Ralph didn’t panic at the sign of her momentary nervousness now. For the first time, he understood that it was just a brief moment of concern that she’d perhaps done something on Ralph’s behalf that he didn’t want. He didn’t need to panic, didn’t need to worry that she was upset and going to leave…  
  
She probably wasn’t going to leave.  
  
The more Ralph looked back on everything that had gone on since he’d met her, the more he realized that if Annabelle was going to leave, she would have left by now. She’d put up with his erratic and strange behavior with surprisingly good grace. He thought of the dead humans, the dead animals, the carving on the walls and the ever-changing moods and behavior.  
  
No, she definitely would have left by now.  
  
And she must love him quite a bit to stay anyway.  
  
“Annabelle?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
Ralph nudged over a bit, patted the side of the bed hopefully. “Do you want to stay?”  
  
Annabelle smiled.  
  
She kicked off her shoes, left them at the side of the bed. Then she swung her legs up, lying alongside him with her arms wrapping around his chest. He put an arm around her waist; she kissed his cheek.  
  
And Ralph was blue.  
  
So beautifully blue.  
  
-End

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of deliberately left the whole Ralph/Annabelle thing a little ambiguous at the end.
> 
> You could read it as ‘they’re romantic’ or you could read it as ‘they tried that and they’re better as close friends/family’. Whatever you like.


End file.
